A great online addition to Maths learning

Banqer is a financial programme being used at Timaru
Campus. It is used within the Maths programme and develops financial literacy
and knowledge of how to manage finances.

We learn about different types of bank accounts, how
mortgages work, tax rates and KiwiSaver. We get paid a weekly wage and can buy
houses. We have deductions like tax, insurance and Kiwisaver. We get weekly
rent as income from our real estate.

As part of the programme we were given the task to
design a multilevel shopping mall with a $2 million budget. We worked in pairs
or groups of three.

We had to design a building that had at least 20
shops, more than one level and had a suitable number of carparks. The shops
cost $500 per square metre to build and every 1 square metre in our carpark
costs $200. The Mall had to have stairs, lifts and toilets too.

When we were designing our mall we couldn’t just draw
it up, as one of our shops was 40 square metres in total area. That would have
taken far too long and our plan on paper would have been absolutely enormous.
We had to draw it on a much smaller scale. For example, one little block on our
design paper equalled 10 square meters in area. So if one level in our shopping
centre was a 1000 square meters, our grid paper had to be ten squares by 10
squares. This made it less complicated and easier to design.

We had to work out how much each shop would cost. Then
we had to add up the cost of all the shops to find out if we were inside our
budget. We had to do a lot of calculations as each small block did not
represent one square metre, but 10. So all our calculations had to be worked
out within these ratios.

We enjoyed this task as it was very challenging and we
had to really work together as a team to get it right.